The Temple of Dawn

by Yukio Mishima

  But Honda saw an indescribable beauty in the parable which Nagasena used to explain samsara and transmigration, that of a sacred taper, whose flame is not quite the same in the evening, at midnight, and at dawn, and yet not different either as it continues on the same wick burning throughout the night. The karmic existence of an individual is not substantive existence but merely a succession of phenomena similar to the flame.

  And so Nagasena taught that time was the existence of samsara itself, almost in the same manner as the Italian philosophers who espoused it many centuries later.

  16

  IT WAS ONLY NATURAL that King Milinda should choose a Buddhist as his companion in these dialogues, for the ruler, being a foreigner, was necessarily excluded from Hinduism. One not born within the Indian caste system, sovereign or not, was arbitrarily rejected by this religion.

  Honda’s first encounter with the words “samsara” and “reincarnation” had occurred thirty years before, at the house of Kiyoaki Matsugae, where, having listened to the sermon of the Abbess of the Gesshu Temple, he had on his own read the Laws of Manu in the French translation of Louis Delongchamps. These laws, which were compiled sometime between the second century before and the second century after the birth of Christ, inherited the idea of samsara established at the beginning of the eighth century B.C. in the Upanishads with their belief in the unity of Brahma and atman. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad states:

  Indeed the person performing a good deed will become benevolent and one performing a bad deed will become evil; one becomes pure by pure acts and black by evil acts. Therefore it is said: A human being is composed of kama, or “desire”; by following kama, one creates will; by following will one creates karma; and through karma, samsara comes into existence.

  In retrospect, Honda’s experience in Benares might have been predestined since that day when, at nineteen, he had become familiar with the Laws. The Laws of Manu encompasses all of religion, morality, custom, and law, beginning with the creation of heaven and earth and ending with samsara. During their rule of India, the British wisely permitted these laws to continue in effect as practical rules for the Hindus who resided there.

  After a second reading of the Laws, Honda was for the first time able to touch upon the origin of the jubilation and adoration that he had witnessed in Benares. He read in the impressive first chapter the description of the birth of Brahma, the ancestor of the entire world, where it is told how a divinity coming into being spontaneously expelled the chaos of darkness and began to shine. First he created water and placed a seed in it. The seed grew and became a golden egg as brilliant as the sun. A year later, he broke the egg and from it Brahma was born. And the water that had nurtured the god was that of Benares.

  The principle of reincarnation expounded in the Laws of Manu classifies human rebirth as being roughly of three kinds. Three natures govern the bodies of all sentient beings: wisdom (sattva), which is joyous, serene, and filled with pure, shining emotions, is reborn as a god; ignorance (rajas), which likes business enterprises, which is indecisive and tends to follow dishonest works and is addicted to sensuous pleasures, is reborn as man; and anger (tamas), which follows a life of indolence and dissipation, slothfulness, cruelty, unbelief, and evil, is reincarnated as an animal.

  Transgressions that bring about transmigration into animals are itemized in detail: the murderer of a Brahman will enter the body of a dog, pig, donkey, camel, cow, goat, sheep, deer, or bird; a Brahman who steals money from another Brahman will be reborn a thousand times as a spider, snake, lizard, or aquatic animal; one who invades the bed of a noble person will be born a hundred times as grass, bush, vine, or flesh-eating animal; one who steals grain will become a rat, a honey filcher will become a horsefly; a milk thief will be born as a bird; a herb scrounger will be a dog; a meat stealer will be reborn as a condor; a thief of fat meat will become a cormorant; a salt filcher will transmigrate as a cricket; a robber of silk will be a partridge; a linen stealer will be reborn as a frog; a cotton thief will become a crane; a cow poacher will be an iguana; a filcher of incense will become a muskrat, a vegetable thief, a peacock; a stealer of fire, a heron; a furniture thief, a wasp; a horse thief, a tiger; a woman abductor, a bear; a stealer of water, a cuckoo; and a fruit poacher, a monkey.

  17

  NONETHELESS, the Theravada Buddhism of Thailand was sustained by the naïve doctrines of the jataka, or “birth stories,” in the Southern Buddhist Canon that retained much of the flavor of the original Pali texts. It was not even considered strange for Shakyamuni, who had made no transgression as a bodhisattva in his former lives, to be reborn as a rat or a golden swan.

  The southern teachings current in Thailand were unknown in Japan until the late nineteenth century. Within one to two hundred years after the death of the Buddha, they were divided into many schools, usually called the Eighteen Theravada Sects; and their teachings, brought to Ceylon by Mahinda under the rule of King Ashoka in the third century B.C., are still practiced there and in Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia.

  In the Theravada Canon, written in Pali, the minute regulations set forth in the vinaya, or “rules” section, still regulate the daily lives of Siamese cenobites. Monks are subject to two hundred and fifty precepts, nuns to three hundred and fifty.

  Honda was anxious to learn about the Thai concept of samsara and transmigration, how it differed from the Yuishiki doctrine that attributes the existence of the exterior world to inner ideation, and what sort of characteristics it possessed. Whatever the little Princess’s belief, he wanted to know what ideas of samsara were entertained by the ubiquitous saffron-robed monks in Bangkok. He read voraciously.

  Thus it was that he discovered that the doctrines of the Eighteen Theravada Sects had originated in the Abhidharma school to which Nagasena, the Elder who had conversed with King Milinda, belonged. As for the dissemination of the Questions of King Milinda, certain scholars claim that the work was probably compiled in northwestern India, where there were then Greek colonies, and later traveled eastward to the region of Magadha where it was transcribed into Pali. Ultimately, with the addition of some material, it reached Ceylon and spread from there to Burma and Thailand, becoming the Milindapanha of the Thai canon.

  We may thus assume that the particular Thai concept of samsara is approximately the same as that advocated by Nagasena. The basic tenet of this sect is that the karmic essence that causes samsara is thought or will. This is consistent with the Agamas and is very close to primary Buddhist thought. The followers of this sect claim that in terms of motivation there is basically neither good nor evil in men or matter in the external world. What makes them good or bad is completely the product of mind, thought, or will.

  So far so good. But in explaining “selflessness,” or anatman, the Abhidharma school proceeds from the fact that the whole material world is avyakrita, “unrecordable” as either good or bad—neutral. For instance, imagine a carriage. Despite the fact that all the constituents of this carriage are simple material elements, they can turn into an instrument of crime if the driver runs over a man and escapes. Thus, as mind and will are causes for transgressions and karma, man is fundamentally anatman, “without self.” However, thought rides in the vehicle of the body and produces samsara and reincarnation through the six karmic causes: passion, anger, wrong views, indifference, non-anger, and correct views. Thought is the cause of samsara, but it is not the migrating body. What this body may be is never explained. The hereafter is merely a continuation of this world, and the taper light burning during one’s final evening in this world is the birth light of the next life with which it is linked.

  On reflection, Honda seemed to understand better what must have been going on in the mind of the little Thai Princess.

  With every rainy season, the rivers in Bangkok overflowed, the divisions between road and river, river and rice paddies immediately vanished. Roads became streams, and rivers boulevards. It was surely not an unusual event, even in the mind of a child, that a flo
od of dreams should invade reality, that past and future, breaking their dikes, should overflow into this world. The green spears of rice plants peeked out of the flooded paddies, and the waters of river and paddy were both bathed in the same sun, both reflected the same masses of summer clouds.

  Similarly, a flood of past and future might have occurred subconsciously in the mind of Princess Moonlight, and the isolated phenomena of this world, like islands dotting the vast stretch of water clearly reflecting the moon after the rains, might be the more difficult of the two to believe. The embankments had been broken down and all divisions had disappeared. The past had begun to speak freely.

  18

  HONDA NOW FELT that he could easily return to the Yuishiki theory that had so puzzled him in his youth. He could grasp the system of Mahayana Buddhism that was like some magnificent cathedral now that he had the help of the lovely enigma he had left behind in Bangkok.

  Nevertheless, the Yuishiki doctrine was a dazzlingly lofty religio-philosophic structure by which Buddhism, once it had denied atman and soul, provided a most precise and meticulous explanation of the theoretical difficulties concerning the migrating body in rebirth and reincarnation. Like the Temple of Dawn in Bangkok, this consummately complex philosophical achievement pierced the vast expanse of the blue morning sky, which, in that mysterious time before sunrise, was filled with cooling winds and glimmering light.

  The contradiction between samsara and anatman, a dilemma unresolved for many centuries, was finally explained by Yuishiki doctrine. What body recurs from life to life? What body is liberated in the Pure Land paradise? What can it be?

  To begin with, the Sanskrit word for Yuishiki, vijnaptimatrata, “consciousness only,” was used in India for the first time by Asanga. Asanga’s life was already half shrouded in legend by the time his name became known in China at the beginning of the sixth century through the Chin kang hsien lun, or “Treatise of Vajrarishi.” The Yuishiki theory originated in the Mahayana Abhidharma sutras, and as we shall see, one gatha, or “verse,” in these writings constitutes the core of Yuishiki ideas. Asanga systematized Yuishiki principles in his main work the Mahayanasamparigraha shastra, “A Collection of Mahayana Treatises.” It is pertinent to note that Abhidharma is a Sanskrit word indicating the last of the tripartite Buddhist canon comprising sutras, rules, and scholastic treatises and is practically synonymous with scholastic treatises.

  Ordinarily we function in life through the mental operation of the so-called six senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind. But the Yuishiki school established a seventh sense, manas, which in its widest import applies to all mental powers that perceive self and individual identity. But it does not stop there. It further advocates the concept of alayavijnana, “the ultimate consciousness.” Translated by “storehouse consciousness” in Chinese, alaya stores away all “seeds” of the phenomenal world.

  Life is active. Alaya consciousness functions. This consciousness is the fruit of all rewards, and it stores all seeds that are the results of all activity. Thus that one is living indicates that alaya is active.

  This consciousness is in constant flux like a foaming white waterfall. While the cascade is always visible to our eyes, the water is not the same from minute to minute. New water incessantly pours by, streaming and surging, sending up its misty vapors.

  Vasubandhu expatiated on Asanga’s theory, and in his Trimshikavi jnaptikarika, or the “Thirty Eulogies to Yuishiki,” stated: “Everything is in constant flux like a torrent.” This was one sentence that the twenty-year-old Honda had heard from the lips of the old Abbess of the Gesshu Temple and had kept locked in his heart, though he had not been quite himself at the time because of Kiyoaki.

  Furthermore, this thought was connected with his trip to India, with the memory of the two waterfalls plunging precipitously into the Wagora at Ajanta, of the streams which had struck his eyes the moment he stepped out of the vihara that he felt someone had just left.

  And in those probably final and ultimate falls at Ajanta reflected a mirror image of the Sanko waterfall at Mount Miwa where Honda had met Isao for the first time and of the cascade in the Matsugae garden where he had encountered the old Abbess.

  Now alaya consciousness is implanted by all seeds of all results. Not only the results of the seven senses we have already spoken of and their activity during life, not only the results of mental activities, but also the seeds of physical phenomena that are the objects of such mental activities are implanted in it. Implanting the seeds into the consciousness is called “perfuming,” in a manner similar to the way incense permeates clothing, the process being referred to as shuji kunju, or “seed perfuming.”

  The process of reasoning will differ depending on whether one regards this alaya consciousness as pure and neutral or otherwise. If it is assumed to be neutral, then the power which generates samsara and reincarnation must be an external, karmic force. All temptations, all things that exist in the external world, or all illusions of the senses from the first through the seventh constantly exert influence on the alaya through the power of karma.

  According to the doctrine of Yuishiki the seeds of karmic power—karmic seeds—are indirect causes, or “auxiliary karma,” and the alaya consciousness itself is both the migrating body and generative power of samsara and reincarnation. Asanga claimed that this idea would eventually lead to the logical conclusion that alaya consciousness itself was not completely pure, that, being a mixture of water and milk, as it were, its adulterated ingredients generated the world of illusion while the pure part brought enlightenment. The karmic seeds of good and evil it contains will materialize in the future according as they are the reward for good or bad acts in the past. This is the difference between the doctrines of the Yuishiki and the Kusha schools, for the latter stresses the external power of karma. Yuishiki developed its unique concept of the world structure based on the idea that the seeds of the alaya consciousness generate this consciousness and form natural law (like causes produce like effects) and that these seeds by means of karmic seeds produce moral law (different causes produce different effects).

  Alaya consciousness is thus the fruit of sentient beings’ retribution and the fundamental cause of all existence. For example, the materializing of a man’s alaya consciousness means simply the existence of that man.

  Thus, alaya consciousness makes the delusions of the world in which we live. The roots of all knowledge, embracing all objects of perception, make these objects materialize. The world is composed of the physical body and its Five Roots,

  ∗ the natural or material world, and “seeds,” that is, the energy that makes all mind and matter materialize. The self, which we tenaciously think of as being our actuality, and the soul, which we presume to continue to exist after death—both are born from the alaya consciousness, which is the creator of all phenomena, and therefore both return to this consciousness; all is reduced to ideation.

  Yet according to the term yuishiki, “consciousness only,” if we think of an object as actually existing in the world and assume all to be merely the product of ideation then we are confusing atman with alaya consciousness. For atman under given conditions is a constant entity, but alaya consciousness is a ceaseless “flow of selflessness.”

  In his Mahayanasamparigraha shastra, Asanga defines three kinds of “perfuming” pertaining to those seeds which cause the world of illusion to materialize after being perfumed by the alaya consciousness.

  The first is the seed of name.

  For instance, when we say that a rose is a beautiful flower, the designation “rose” distinguishes it from other flowers. In order to ascertain how beautiful it is, we go up to a rose and take cognizance of how different it is from other blooms. The rose first appears as “name”; the concept gives rise to imagination, and when imagination comes into contact with the real object, its fragrance, color, and shape are stored away in memory. Or it is possible that the beauty of a flower we have seen without knowing its name has moved
us to desire further information about it; on hearing the name “rose” we conceptualize it. Thus we learn meanings, names, words, and their objects, as well as the relationships among them. All things we learn are not necessarily beautiful names nor always accurate meanings, but everything we acquire by perception and thought has been since time immemorial stored away in memory and brings forth worldly phenomena.

  The second seed is that of attachment to self.

  When the seventh of the eight consciousnesses, manas, gives rise in the alaya consciousness to egotism with its differentiation between self and others, that egotism insists on an absolute individual self; by eventually moving the other six consciousnesses it produces a series of “perfumings of self.” Honda could not but think that both the formation of so-called consciousness of self in modern times as well as the fallacy of egotistic philosophy found their origins in the second seed.

  The third is the seed of the trailokya.